


No Time for Dancing

by cofax



Series: Life During Wartime [4]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU, Apocafic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-01-14
Updated: 2000-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 16:44:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>another perspective on the beginning of the end; or, not everyone gets a happy ending</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Time for Dancing

 

The October sun came in through the south window of the apartment, filtered a little by the crimson leaves of a sugar maple standing outside. The apartment was a pleasant space, a little spare, maybe a little dusty. But the floor was a solid expanse of hardwood, sanded and varnished, and it picked up the light and converted it to a golden sheet. The sunshine filled the room, reflecting off the other windows, sneaking through the bedroom and bathroom doors, moving smoothly across the shards of glass scattered across the floor. 

It stumbled when it hit the corpse.

The young woman lay on her back, a few paces from the front door, directly in the wash of light from the largest window. She was thin, and very fair, with large grey eyes and shoulder-length dark brown hair. What was left of her neck was long and patrician. She had been dressed well but simply, in linen trousers and a simple knit silk top. The blood had soaked into the silk and linen, had spread around her in a fan, had stained the upholstery of the old rocking chair in front of the window.

The blood on the floor was not yet dry when the door swung open.

 

***

It was the end of the world, and I was worried about tzatziki. The truck was loaded with equipment and survival gear, and it swayed as Byers took the on-ramp for the highway. The three of us were crammed in there with damned little room to move, and I had it the worst. I had lost the toss first to Byers and then to Langly; so I was in the back, tracking satellite information. At least I'd convinced them that if this was the end of the world, then goddammit we were stopping for gyros while we could. The problem was eating the messy sandwich while keeping the sauce and onions off my laptop.

Traffic on 270 was heavy, but not enough to slow us down. I don't usually get uptight about congestion, but stop-and-go traffic when we were trying to flee the apocalypse, well, that would have been too much. 

Byers was driving; he had run the show all day, as soon as werealized what was going on. He sent out the warnings, decided what to pack, and picked our route. He made sure we warned Mulder in time -- although I would have, anyway, just to make sure one thing of beauty survived: and I don't mean Mulder. At any rate, it was damned weird, seeing Byers so commanding. He'd even *snapped* at Langly when the doofus dropped a box of supplies, and cans of tomato soup and refried beans went bouncing across the garage floor like ping pong balls. Byers doesn't lose control like that.

Usually, we wouldn't let him get away with it, either. We'reall three of us anarchists by temperament or training, and any authoritarian impulses are squelched. Frequently by nerf-pistol or wedgie. I prefer short-sheeting, but Langly is more straight-forward.

Today Byers was different. While I was convincing my sister to get the hell out of San Francisco, Byers was loading equipment into the truck, downloading files, and checking the oil on the big Chevy we were delivering to Mulder. He made Langly track satellite data and monitor police channels for any sudden action. It was remarkable, really -- a Byers I hadn't seen in months, a Byers who had a *purpose,* a destiny.

Once we figured out what the hell was going on, it only took a few hours to load the trucks and make some phone calls. I don't know who Langly called: he's never mentioned any family other than an estranged father in the Midwest. I called my sister, like I said, and sent an e-mail to a military-strategy list I'm on. My ex -- well, the restraining order said I was forbidden to approach within 200 yards, and I doubt she'd hear what I have to say now, twelve years later. Thank God we had no kids for me to sweat over. I think I heard Byers call his folks, although how he could explain the looming apocalypse to a retired couple in Phoenix was a mystery to me. By 2:00 we were well out of the city.

So here we were, heading north towards Maryland and Pennsylvania, despite the fact that the nearest bunker was due west in the Shenandoah Valley. Byers had other plans for us, despite my arguments. If I leaned forward over the computer propped in my lap, and craned my neck sideways, I could just see the line of Byers' jaw; it looked as if it were clenched on an entire carton of Bazooka bubble-gum.

Langly wasn't real happy about the situation, so he was even more annoying than usual. For some reason the asshole wouldn't leave his place without a super-sized bag of Cheetos, and as he was the navigator for this stretch, he was getting greasy orange spots all over my Triple-A map of the mid-Atlantic states. "I don't see why we gave Mulder the pickup," he groused as he manhandled the map. "There's room for us all in there, and it's in better shape than this yuppie-mobile!" He flapped a hand at the interior of my beloved Explorer, sending a spray of orange powder across the dashboard. 

*Jesus. An hour into this trip and the truck's already a mess. Why couldn't he be a bubble gum fan?*

I saw Byers twitch. "There isn't room for *four* in the pickup, Langly. And without a camper top on that truck, all our equipment would be exposed to the weather." 

"And you'd better *not* be complaining about giving Mulder and the lovely Agent Scully a chance at survival," I growled from the back seat, where I was wedged between tottering stacks of electronic equipment and survival gear. But it was half-hearted. I knew that what was bothering Langly wasn't the fact that we gave Mulder the truck -- it was the fact that we were taking a long detour before heading for cover.

A detour entirely driven by Byers' fairy-tale romance with Susanne Modeski.

Byers had built a career based on saving Susanne Modeski, and now, with the thread of god-knows-what hanging over us, he was going to do it again if it killed him. And us too.

I suppose we could have refused to go. We knew where the bunkers were, and the passwords to get in. We had the skills to buy our way into any one of dozens of paranoid little cells scattered across three time zones. We could have bought or borrowed a car of our own, loaded some gear, and left Byers to his romantic quest.

Don't think we didn't consider it. But we didn't do it. I had my own reasons for staying with Byers, but the strongest was that I didn't trust Susanne Modeski. And I couldn't leave Byers alone with her. Last time, we'd all barely escaped with our lives. Byers is such a romantic, he probably never realized how she'd manipulated him. Okay, I'm hardly one to talk: anyone who knows how fond I am of Dana Scully would consider me a romantic too. But that's not romanticism, it's proof of my sanity. Only a fool or the truly deranged would fail to appreciate Dana Scully's beauty and intelligence. And she's damned hot, too.

But I stray from the point. John Byers believes in the fair damsel, the happy ending, the once upon a time. He has no ideathat Susanne may not fit the role he's casting her in. 

He's determined to make this fairy tale have a happy ending. 

Guess he never read the Brothers Grimm.

 

***

 

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

 

Of course she lived alone.

It was difficult financially, but she no longer trusted herselfenough even to choose a roommate. Her judgment, she had decided, was suspect. Until she found her feet again in this strangely wide-open world, she would live alone.

It wasn't that bad. Rents were not high in this run-down suburb of Pittsburgh, but she had expenses, and she couldn't risk getting a job using her doctorate. So she was a lab technician, and also worked three nights a week doing data entry. She didn't mind. What else would she be doing? Watching television?

This afternoon, this last Saturday, it was sunny and warm, a pleasant Indian summer day. She had been to the lab in the morning, because Casey was out of town and she had promised to cover for him. On the way home she had stopped at the store, picked up some produce, and, in a burst of optimism, a nice Riesling.

She unlocked the door cautiously, balancing the bag of groceries on one knee, the foot propped against the other knee. For ten years, she had been afraid. And that had not changed, even seven months after most of the world thought she had died. But things were better now. 

In the seven months since Susanne Modeski had died, and the six months since Karen Tenneson had taken the job at the lab and the ground-floor apartment, there had been no evidence that anyone suspected the truth. No one following her home from the lab or the grocery store, no suspicious cars across the street, no mysterious phone calls with no one at the other end. She had begun to relax, to trust that John was as good as his word and that the shadowy men behind the Project had accepted the ruse.

The door swung shut behind her as she carried the groceries to the table in the dining area. It was not a large apartment, but the side windows faced south and the room was full of sun. After so many years working in laboratories, often day and night, she could not get enough of the sunlight. She noticed, walking to the refrigerator with her hands full of vegetables, that there was a message on the answering machine.

Probably a telemarketer. She couldn't afford to have friends. They would notice things. Notice that she had no pictures of family on her mantel, received few phone calls, read too many out-of-town newspapers and journals for a lab tech at a cosmetics firm. That she never used a supermarket club card and made most of her purchases in cash. That nearly everything she owned she'd bought within the past year.

After loading the vegetables into the crisper, she walked back to the table, stabbing the "play" button on the way. The tape rewound for a few seconds, then began.

"Susanne, this is John."

A bag of frozen peas slipped unnoticed to the floor. 

"This is it. Something's happening. We don't know what it is, but it's coming fast. I -- we'll be coming to get you today. Pack whatever you don't want to lose." There was a long pause.

"Susanne, I don't know what's going to happen, but --" John's voice, with a tension in it she didn't recall ever hearing before, was interrupted by someone in the background. 

"Byers, where's those files Mulder gave us? You know the ones. I *need* them--" There was a crash and some muffled swearing.

John's voice came back, more hurried now. "We have to go. We'll be there soon as we can. You know -- you know I love---" The tape beeped and came to a stop, out of room. 

*I should have gotten voice-mail,* she thought. 

The answering machine beeped again and rewound, leaving the echo of John Byers' voice in the still air of the small apartment. Susanne stood and simply looked at the machine for a few moments, unable to comprehend fully what he had said.

She sat down, finally, in the rocking chair she had bought for $7.50 at a yard sale three blocks over. It was battered, and needed to be refinished and reupholstered, but it reminded her of her grandmother, and so she had crammed it into the rear of her car and brought it home. She kept it in the window, in spite of how the sun faded the upholstery.

She should have been warm in the late afternoon sunlight, but her fingers were cold as she covered her mouth with her hands. 

The end was here. He was coming to get her. She had to pack.

*Oh dear god.* 

What Grant had always said would happen, what she had never truly believed. The breakthrough had been made, or someone had run out of patience. This life was over. This *world* was over. The Project had started in earnest, and she was outside the fold, a technician in a cosmetics laboratory in Pittsburgh.

*She was outside.* Outside, in the cold, in the dark, exposed and vulnerable.

She stood suddenly, decisively. John was right. She had to pack.

But she also had to write a letter. 

 

***

 

"So," said Langly, around the finger that was picking Cheetos out of his teeth, "when did you tell her we'd be there? Traffic's pretty heavy."

Byers didn't say anything, and I looked up from where I'd been pecking away at the laptop plugged into my cell phone. Byers peered into the driver's side mirror and fiddled with the radio.

" . . . I left a message." He said without looking at Langly.

"You did what?!" Byers hunched his head down a bit, but even without seeing his face, I knew he had that look, the one that meant nothing we said would make any difference at all. Langly was still going. "We're driving four fucking hours out of our way to pick up someone who might be in -- in New York City for the weekend? This is nuts, man! Nuts!"

Byers shot Langly a vicious look, but as he opened his mouth, I looked down to see that a blinking menu box had popped up on my laptop screen. I hit "return" but there was no dial tone.

"Phones are down," I announced, and everyone shut up.

This wasn't funny anymore.

 

***

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

 

Within ten minutes she was nearly ready to go. Standing in the bedroom doorway, she glanced around the apartment, looking for anything she might have forgotten. She had one suitcase packed, and had changed into her sneakers. She had a little jewelry, no photographs, no mementos. There was just one thing more – the letter. She turned on the desktop computer on the table in the living room and opening a file, began to type.

After a furious few minutes, she hit and watched her printer spit a page out into the tray.

The doorbell rang.

He was here sooner than she had expected. Glancing anxiously toward the computer, Susanne ran a hand through her hair and opened the door.

It wasn't John. 

*Shit. Played again.* 

"No, wait--"

And then she fell.

 

If anyone had been home in the apartments upstairs or next door, they might have heard the sound of breaking glass from the ground-floor apartment. But it was a warm weekend afternoon, and most of the building's residents were out. No one noticed anything. And even if they had, they could not have called the police; the phones were out.

 

***

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

 

This was an okay section of Pittsburgh. Not wonderful, but okay -- mixed income, apartments and single-family homes. Better than my neighborhood, at any rate, with the junkies huddled in my doorway every night. There were kids on the street on bicycles and skateboards. John and I crowded into the vestibule of Susanne's building while Langly sat impatiently at the wheel of the Explorer, tapping his fingers to Jethro Tull.

I guessed what had happened before the door was fully open. But it was too late to warn Byers. He had rung the bell, and then knocked, and then tried the knob before stepping inside. 

*Shit.*

"Ah, Jesus, no--" But it was too late for prayers, even if anyone was listening.

She lay on her back, one arm above her head, the other resting gently on her chest. She was dead: there was far too much blood for anyone to have survived. The blood was everywhere.

Langly honked once, ignorant of the fact that Byers' world had slipped off its axis.

I closed the door behind John, where he stood stiffly just two steps into the room, and then I stepped forward to crouch next to Susanne's body. She was still a little warm, the blood on the floor mostly liquid. She had been shot in the throat, at very close range. It looked like the slug had gone up into her brain. I'm no pathologist, but I know professional work. She would have died nearly instantly.

There was an open suitcase upside-down on the floor; her clothes were everywhere. Blood stained the cup of a white lace bra, and I twitched it out of the puddle. I hadn't seen this much blood since -- in a long time.

She had dyed her hair dark brown since we'd seen her in Las Vegas. It was all tangled about her shoulders, sticky with blood. Her large grey eyes were still open, staring at the ceiling, staring at the face of her killer. I reached my hand to close her eyes at least, and John spoke.

"No." He settled down beside me, unaware of the blood under his knees. "I'll do it."

I swallowed as his hands passed over Susanne's face, tracing every feature, before he gently closed her eyes. He picked up her hand and cradled it in his. And just sat there.

I couldn't just haul his ass out of here, much as I wanted to. There was an itch between my shoulder blades, an itch I hadn't felt in several years. I stood up and wandered around the apartment to get rid of the feeling that we were being watched.

Whoever had killed her had tried to make it look like a robbery. Trinkets were tossed from shelves, paperwork lay scattered on the floor, some of it slowly staining red-brown. Even the computer monitor was upside-down on the floor. The screen was shattered -- what did they use, a hammer? -- and there was broken glass all over that side of the room. The printer had been yanked off its stand, and the blank paper from the tray lay spread across the floor. The computer itself was still running, safe under the table. Its pale green lights blinked in the shadows. She wouldn't be needing it anymore; I leaned down and turned it off.

There was a single piece of paper lying face up in the entrance to the kitchen, some of the print obliterated by the blood that had soaked into it. I picked it up by the corner, for no particular reason, and would have dropped it again except I caught the words at the top of the page. "Dear John," it said.

*Fuck.*

 

***

 

Dear John,

I know I owe you everything. My life, for the past several  
years, has been because you gave it to me. My life again last  
spring, because you saw me more clearly [illegible] me from my  
own poor judgment, my own fond trust in a man who [illegible]

And now here I am, with a new name, a new life, because of you.

I know you love me. I hear it in your voice, [illegible] few  
times we have spoken on the phone.

[illegible] so much you risk my life every time you call me.  
But you can't stop calling.

Today you called and said that this was the end, that you were  
coming [illegible] that we would be safe. That the Project was  
underway and if we hid underground we would be safe, at least  
for a while.

But John, you don't know these men. There is so much about the  
Project I could have told you. I could have told you that you  
can't beat them. They are too powerful, and if this is the end,  
then everyone on the outside is going to die. That's just how it  
is.

You can't escape it, John. And I'm not going to try.

You love me so much you want me to go with you into some bunker  
[illegible] be okay, because at least we will be together.

Well, I'm sorry, John, I really am. But I just can't.

I want to live.

And I can live without love.

Susanne

 

***

I felt like the lamb, tomato, and onions were trying to crawl out of my stomach. This was so bad I couldn't even begin to describe the ways in which it sucked rutabagas.

Susanne hadn't meant to come with us at all. Susanne had had a different plan, one involving her former co-workers and possibly reinstatement as the Project's prize biochemist. But the smoker and his cronies apparently hadn't shared her opinion of her value. 

I had stepped into the kitchen, out of Byers' sight, to read the letter. Now I glanced into the other room. He was still sitting by Susanne's body. I didn't think he knew his face was wet with tears. He was perfectly quiet as the blood soaked into his jeans.

I thought seriously, for a moment or two, about showing Byers the letter in my hand. Instead I stuffed it into my vest pocket.

"C'mon, Buddy," I said. "We have to go."

John didn't look up from where he sat next to her body. There was a tiny smudge of drying blood on his nose.

His voice was thick. "We have to bury her."

I looked out the window. The setting sun cast long shadows across the yards and the unraked leaves in front of Susanne's building. Two cars went by, and a woman carried her bicycle through the front door of the house across the street. There  
was no way we could move Susanne's body into the Explorer without being spotted. And she had no backyard. No privacy. 

It was getting late. If Susanne's phone had been tapped, they would know we were on our way. Someone might be outside *now,* watching the building. With a sudden rush of adrenaline, I swung open the door to the bedroom. No one; the room was still and empty, the bedclothes tossed aside when Susanne got up this morning.

I still had the twitches. "We need to move. What if they come back?"

John shook his head. "Why should they? They got what they wanted. She's dead..."

"Byers, *they knew where she was.* They probably had a tap on her phone, and knew we were coming." I tried not to think about that crumpled piece of paper in my pocket, and the other reasons why someone might know we were here. How had they known where she was? We had been so careful.

"NO! Don't you get it? We can't just leave her here. She was -- she was going to come with us. With me." There was a hint of hysteria in his voice.

Oh, Jesus. Byers was lost in his fantasy; I needed another angle, or we'd be here all night. I did *not* want to spend the hours of darkness watching the blowflies land on Susanne Modeski's body. I'd seen enough of that when I was younger. Pragmatism wasn't working here -- I had to buy into John's state of mind to get him moving.

I put a hand on his shoulder. "John, she wouldn't want you to stay here and die for her. She would want you to go on. You have work to do. Work she would have wanted you to do." I cannot *believe* the fucking crap that will come out of my mouth when I'm desperate. 

But it worked.

After a moment, Byers staggered to his feet, wiping his bloody hands against his jeans. Then he walked into the kitchen as if he'd been there five hundred times before. Whatthehell – maybe he had; maybe all those weekends with his aunt were something else entirely.

While I gaped, he opened the freezer door and removed a box of frozen ravioli, the red logo on the top shining through the film of freezer-burn on the white cardboard. There was a "thunk" as he shook the box gently, then levered open one end. Tilting it carefully, he slid out onto his hands three zip disks, a compact disk, and two tiny glass vials.

I looked at the objects in his hand for a long moment before the depth of Byers' perfidy dawned upon me.

*Sonofabitch.*

Those were *Scully's* files. The only proofs we had of what had been done to her, and what might save us all, if we could unlock their secrets. And he had sent them to Susanne. Byers had trusted Susanne with possibly the most vital evidence we had gathered in the past ten years, evidence that could save millions of lives. Evidence that Scully had trusted *us* to keep safe when she realized the FBI was too compromised for her to store it there.

But Susanne, whom Byers had loved, had never told us *anything* about the Consortium, even after ten years in the midst of it. Even after they tried to kill her, and Byers had saved her again. Even after we made her a new life. I had always thought that was kind of suspicious, but Byers hadn't let me press the issue before she left Las Vegas.

And now Susanne Modeski, brilliant biochemist for the consortium, who had been working on Dana Scully's files and samples, was dead mere hours before we picked her up. Had she called them, and was this their response? Or was this just preventative on their part? How important had Susanne been? Had she told them about the files before she died? Worse, did they know *without* her telling them, and leave them for us, knowing they were useless data?

I looked at John, with the ravioli box in his hand, a smear of blood on his nose, and a distant look in his eyes, and knew that I could not ask him any of these questions. I suddenly missed Mulder's kaleidoscopic brain and Scully's steel-trap logic: they might be able to put this puzzle together. I knew, with a cold ache, that the weeks to come would make me miss them even more, and not just for the company.

***

"Hey, what happened? Was she there?" Langly was puzzled, his hand on the ignition. He didn't seem to notice the dark stains on Byers' jeans. He looked from Byers to me and back again. "Was she there? You guys were in there for a while."

Byers puts a hand up to stop the question. "Langly --" But he couldn't say the words, and smeared his hand over his face instead. He turned his face to the window.

Baffled, Langly turned to me. I couldn't meet his eyes either. "Just drive, Langly. Just -- just drive." 

Langly nodded once, sharply; he wasn't as obtuse in the personal realm as he sometimes let on. I would talk to him later, tell him about Susanne's betrayal. And Byers'.

First I had to think about all this. We needed to strategize, and I was going to have to tell Byers my suspicions at some point. Later.

Langly put the truck into gear and headed north. Soon we were rolling through orchards and cornfields, past cider stands and farmhouses. I tried to pay attention to the scenery. In hours or days it all might be gone forever. But I couldn't; all I could see was that body on the floor, and John Byers' eyes.

There was a safe-house in upstate New York. I thought we could make it there by morning. We had the files and samples, and within an hour the phones came back on.

I was not reassured.

**Author's Note:**

> This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,  
> this ain't no fooling around  
> No time for dancing, or lovey dovey,  
> I ain't got time for that now  
> \- "Life During Wartime," Talking Heads
> 
>  
> 
> This is Maria's fault, since she knew Byers wouldn't go underground without at least trying to reach Susanne. But killing Susanne was entirely *my* idea. She also suggested the Cheetos. My betas saved this story from the round-file more than once. I owe a HUGE debt to Maria, Marasmus, Maggie & JET for supportiveness above and beyond the call. They're the wonder-bras of betas .


End file.
